1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to E-commerce and, more particularly to online comparison shopping.
2. Description of the Related Art
The merger of the Internet and commerce to form what is now known worldwide as “E-commerce” has led to the proliferation of the use of the Internet and World Wide Web (“the web”) for purchases of all kinds. Everything from airline tickets to automobiles to vitamins can be purchased on the web and such sales have experienced explosive growth.
A “web crawler” is a program that systematically fetches web pages, typically based upon the input of one or more search terms. Google (www.Google.com) is one example of a web crawler that has gained some notoriety. Using a web crawler, a consumer wishing to shop for a particular item, for example, an IBM Thinkpad® computer, can simply type in the search terms “IBM Thinkpad” and obtain a listing of pages that use this term. Obviously, such a search is extremely broad, as it will also return pages relating to Thinkpad repair, Thinkpad endorsements, and the like. A person trying to find Thinkpad vendors must wade through the numerous “hits” returned by the web crawler to locate those that are selling the article.
Another option is to go to the website of a known retailer, e.g., www.CircuitCity.com or www.CompUSA.com, and perform a search within their website for the desired item. While this is an acceptable option, it requires multiple entry of the same query at each site, and also requires that the shopper be aware of the various sites and their web addresses.
To simplify a user's online shopping experience, a specialized form of web crawler, called a “shop-bot,” was developed. Shop-bot sites such as www.Froogle.com and www.MySimon.com have refined the way in which many people do on-line shopping. Instead of going to several websites manually and then comparing prices among the websites, the shop-bot concept allows users to simultaneously find the current prices of a particular item on several websites, by inputting identification information (e.g., a part number) once and then issuing a search command to the shop-bot. Essentially, the shop-bot “crawls” only sites that sell the type of item being searched for, filtering out extraneous sites that are not E-commerce sites.
Shop-bots are beneficial to E-commerce shoppers and E-commerce sites. However, prices invariably vary from one day to the next, especially for “high tech” products. Thus, users who are truly bargain-conscious must repeatedly search the web, for days or weeks on end, in the hope that they hit the “best price” for the particular item they are looking for.
When on-line auction sites like eBay and Auctions by Amazon are considered, it becomes even more difficult. A search for an online auction may yield several items matching the desired item, and whose current bid price is quite low, but whose auctions do not end for several days.
What is needed is a way to seamlessly enable a user to identify a desired item and automatically monitor prices on the item for a predetermined time period.